Chapter 3. Temple #2
I stepped around Annette, staying out of arm’s reach, and touched Ava’s nose with my index finger.
She blinked. Her eyes crossed, trying to focus. “I’m sorry, Uncle Temple.”
“It was an accident,” I said. Again.
Ava looked past me. Her body went still as she saw the mess. “What happened?”
“When the sword struck the wall, the paneling collapsed,” I said, planting the idea in the fertile space where I’d uprooted her memory. “It was rotten, so all it took was one impact in the right place to bring everything down. It’s not your fault.”
“My friend Madison used to get water in her basement,” she said. “The walls started to crack, and she said if they’d waited one more day to get someone to come fix it, their whole house could have collapsed.”
“This house is not going to collapse,” I assured her.
“Isn’t mold toxic?” she asked. “Are we going to get cancer?”
“Upstairs, both of you.” Annette’s tone was as effective as any spell.
Seconds later, it was just the two of us.
She turned to me, her eyes faintly bloodshot with demonic rage.
Her nails had curled and thickened into claws.
Perfectly manicured claws with jade polish and French tips, but claws nonetheless.
“What—and I cannot stress this enough—the fuck?”
I should have stayed in bed. “Sorry. I forgot about Ava. I was distracted by my house falling apart.”
“Distracted?” Anger wafted from her body like heat from a forge. “Temple, do you know what will happen if Morgan breathes one word of what you just did to his father? I have a hard-enough time convincing Blake to let me see my grandchildren as it is.”
I squinted at the wall, trying to find the source of the leaks. “Would you like me to adjust Morgan’s memories, too?”
She looked like she was about to hit me. Then her expression softened, as did her tone. Her claws relaxed into their normal form, though the transformation had left chips in the polish. “What’s going on? You’re grumpier than usual.”
I felt myself getting grumpier still. I’d take anger over pity any day.
I sorted through possible answers. I’m tired. I’m dying. The foundation of my power sprang a leak, and I don’t know why or how. But she and Jenny worried too much already, so I said only, “I’m fine.”
“I thought you and the house were connected. Didn’t you feel”—she waved at the wall—“all of this?”
“Hell if I know,” I said. “Every morning, I wake up with shooting pains in my bones, like termites burrowing through my marrow. I thought it was just me.”
“Maybe it is.” She was putting out those sexy succubus pheromones, but I didn’t think it was deliberate. They leaked sometimes when she got emotional. Not that they had any effect on me. I’d learned to block demonic influences when I was eleven.
“Is it possible we’re looking at this backward?” she asked. “Maybe it’s not about you responding to the house’s damage. Maybe the damage is coming from you, and this is how it manifests?”
My temper flared, mostly because the same thought had occurred to me. “I’m not accidentally destroying my own damn home, Annette.”
“Don’t you get snippy with me, Temple Finn. It’s my home, too.” She took a breath, visibly calming herself. “You’re almost a century old. When you don’t get enough fiber, all the pipes in the house get backed up. If your body is getting weaker, wouldn’t the house and its magic do the same?”
My grandmother had died from a heart attack when I was eight years old. When she collapsed, the wood stove in the living room had exploded.
“Maybe,” I grudgingly admitted.
If I was the cause, what the hell was I supposed to do about it? Age and entropy eroded us all.
I’d faced plenty of fellow spellcasters who’d tried to fight the effects of time: stealing the youth of others, body-swapping, even one who discovered a spell to allow him to age backward.
I’d taken him in at the end, bottle-feeding him and changing his diapers for those final months until he de-aged past the point of viability.
I’d fought death and sent him running with his bony tail between his legs countless times, but I wasn’t going to fight old age. The cost was too high. But I didn’t want to take the Finn family homestead with me when I went.
I pushed those worries aside and focused on the immediate problem.
“I need to run upstairs to fetch my book. I’ve got a spell that will incinerate the mold and sterilize the wall without damaging it.
I should also call Phile, my dryad friend from Bow Ridge.
He can restore the damaged wood. This will all be as good as new in a few days. ”
“Temple . . .” Annette’s jaw tightened as she bit back whatever sympathy or reassurance she’d been about to offer. “When you’re finished, I need a favor. I’ve got a blood sample for you to track. It’s from the guy who attacked the harvester last night.”
“Put it in a ziplock bag and stick it in the fridge until I can get to it.” I turned toward the stairs. If I had to stand here and take one more minute of her poorly masked worry and pity, I was going to fireball the place.
“Can we please keep the goddamned cat out of the sacred elixir?”